Social media is a world in itself. With 2.46 billion users in 2017, it's a place of non-stop activities that present a myriad of opportunities to marketers. Over here we present data-backed insights to help marketers leverage the unique opportunities to connect and engage with their audience. 

Users & Social Channels

1. Facebook has 2.2 billion+ monthly active users.
2. YouTube has more than 1.57 billion monthly active users.
3. WhatsApp has 1.5 billion monthly active users.
4. Facebook Messenger has more than 1.3 billion monthly active users.
5. Instagram has 1 billion monthly active users.
6. LinkedIn has 250 million monthly active users.
7. Pinterest has nearly 200 million monthly active users.
8. Twitter has around 336 million monthly active users.
9. Snapchat has 191 million daily active users.

Are People Leaving Facebook? 

The answer is probably No. As per Pew Research Center, around two-thirds of U.S. adults use Facebook. However, young users are gravitating towards Snapchat and Instagram. 

10. 85% of U.S. teens, aged between 13 & 17, use YouTube. 
11. 72% of U.S. teens use Instagram and 69% Snapchat. 
12. 51 % of U.S. teens use Facebook.

Social Media Users - Behaviour And Interaction With Brands

As the number of social media users grow, their behaviour is also changing. Users are increasingly turning to social channels to research about products and brands. In terms of content, photos that users have taken of themselves are shared the most, as per a research by SSI. We are seeing an increase in passive social networkers ( who are on the platforms to just access news or to fill time). To fill time they watch mobile videos, live broadcasts, and consume other interesting content formats. 

13. Daily time spent on social media stands at around 2 hours and 15 minutes per day. (as per a report by Globalwebindex)
14.16-24 year-olds spend an average of 2 hours and 58 minutes on social media every day. (Globalwebindex)
15. 41% of users say they use social media to stay in touch with friends. 
(Globalwebindex)

16. 39% of users use social channels to access the news. Similarly, 39 % use social networks to fill their spare time. (Globalwebindex). In a research released by Pew Research Center, it was found that in 2017 two-thirds of American adults got news from social media.

17. Globally, it’s now a fifth of internet users who follow sports events via social, as per the report Social Video by GlobalWebIndex Report 2018.

18. Millennials and Gen Xers are more likely to share different aspects of their lives on social media than Baby Boomers, as per the research by SSI. 

19. We are also seeing a rise in private sharing. With social messaging surpassing social media usage, a lot of content sharing has been happening in private. 

20. A research on how European youth is using social media, found that almost half of young Europeans who are on social media have leveraged the power of the channel to find jobs. 

21. Almost 4 in 10 internet users follow their favorite brands on social media channels. ( Globalwebindex)

22. 1 in 4 internet users follow brands from which they are thinking of making a purchase from. (Globalwebindex)

23. 81% of millennial women say that social media is the best way for brands to reach them, with 42 percent identifying Facebook as the best medium in particular, and 40 percent saying it was Instagram, as per a report from Bustle.

24. Consumers are opinionated about what they want from brands on each social platform. 83% of consumers are eager to see the key characteristics of a brand’s personality come to life on Facebook, found a report by Sprout Social.

25. Social media's role in the purchase journey grows. 41% of global internet users say they turn to social to gain information on new brands or products. For the users aged between 16-24, social has overtaken search engines as a brand discovery and research channel. (Globalwebindex)

26. Social video plays an important role when it comes to influencing purchase behaviour, as per a study by gen.video and Geometry Global.

27. Activities of social video viewers as per the report Social Video by GlobalWebIndex Report 2018.

28. Users find certain brand behaviours annoying on social media, as per the study by Sprout Social.

Influencer Marketing - A Waste Of Money? 

Brands don't think so! In 2016, 9 out of 10 social media influencers were contracted by a brand to create sponsored content, as per this report. And the trend is seeing an upward growth, as marketers are increasingly collaborating with influencers. A March 2018 survey by Activate, found that 61% of influencers had more sponsored partnership opportunities in 2017 than they had in 2016.

29. Here's how influencers work with brands in different ways:

30. In 2017, 24% of marketers worked with 25-50 influencers per program, according to the survey titled The State of Influencer Marketing 2018 by Linqia

31. According to this report 89% marketers believe that influencer marketing can positively impact how people feel about a brand.

32.  39% of marketers plan to increase their influencer marketing budget in 2018, according to the survey by Linqia

Though influencer marketing budgets will increase in 2018, yet marketers are struggling to measure the ROI of influencer marketing. According to the report by Linqia, 76% of marketers cite measuring the ROI of influencer marketing as their top challenge for 2018. Let's see how marketers are currently measuring the success of their influencer marketing efforts. 

33. As per the report by Linqia, the top metric for measuring the success of influencer marketing campaigns is engagement.

34.  60% marketers use press coverage as a means to measure success, as per the report titled The Age of Social Influence

35. Brands are increasingly collaborating with micro-influencers, and one of the reasons can be higher engagement rates that their posts garner. As per this study, micro-influencers with 30,000 or fewer followers are 6.7X more efficient per engagement than celebrities with millions of followers.

36. Last year, FTC had issued notices to top celebrities like  Naomi Campbell, Heidi Klum, and Victoria Beckham over product posts on their Instagram accounts without clearly mentioning their relationships with brands. In the current situation, the report by Activate found that only 52% of influencers and 60% of marketers feel that they have a good understanding of FTC guidelines for sponsored posts  

37. As per the study conducted by Activate, it was found that vanity filters like “Follower Count” are falling behind more refined considerations like “Audience Demographics” and "Content Aesthetics". 

38. Instagram Stories are hugely popular. 55% of influencers and 70% of marketers say that they have incorporated Instagram Stories into their sponsored partnerships, as per the study by Activate.

Businesses & Social - Channels, Content Types, And Challenges

Despite marketers experiencing decline in their organic reach, Facebook still remains the preferred channel for businesses of all sizes. 86% of small businesses use Facebook, whereas only 48% use Instagram, as per a report by Clutch. Lack of skilled resources to create unique and relevant content remain one of the challenges that businesses face. 

39. 96% of marketers say their business is actively using Facebook. Twitter is close behind with 89% of respondents saying they use the platform for their business. ( Buffer's State of Social 2018) 

40. Over 70% of small businesses use social media. (Clutch)

When it comes to social content, 46% of marketers say they’re already implementing social videos, with another 26% planning to implement in 2018, as per Hootsuite's 2018 Social Trends Survey. Another content format that brands are finding effective is user-generated content (UGC).

41. UGC posts featuring brands earned almost seven-times more engagement than brand-generated posts in 2016, according to a new study by Mavrck.

42. Many businesses still don't have a documented social media strategy.

43. 26% of businesses say they lack financial and human resources to make social media work, as per a survey by The Manifest and Smart Insights. 
44. 40% of respondents said that developing content targeted for specific social networks made it difficult for their organization to be successful with social media, as per Hootsuite's 2018 Social Media Trends. 
45. Marketers are struggling to measure ROI and make the “big picture” connection to business and marketing goals, as per the State of Social Marketing 2017 by Simplymeasured 

46. BuzzSumo reviewed 100 million articles published in 2017 and found that social sharing has halved since 2015.

Social Advertisement 

Social ad spending is increasing and Facebook has the biggest share of the pie. According to eMarketer, in 2018, 10% of total US ad spending will go to Facebook. The State of Social Marketing 2017 by Simplymeasured found that 59% of social marketers consider ads "very important" to their strategy.

47. 94% of marketers say Facebook is the most popular platform for paid ads. (Buffer)
48. 74% of marketers believe social media marketing has been “somewhat effective” or “very effective” for their business. And those who run ads are more likely to report that social media marketing has been effective for them.

49.  Only 31.6% of marketers set web traffic and conversion goals to justify social's business value. (State of Social Marketing 2017 by Simplymeasured)

50. Social marketing budgets currently take 10% of the total marketing budget. In the next 5 years, it is expected to increase to 18.5%.  (State of Social Marketing 2017 by Simplymeasured)

51. Engagement is the popular metric to measure the ROI of social media advertising.

52. The report by Simplymeasured also found engagement as the most often used metric to measure the success of social. 

We will keep updating this space with more insights. For daily insights on relevant and useful digital marketing stories, visit our Digital Marketing Apple page.

If you need any help in social media strategy for your business, contact us at solutions@techshu.com